ABOUT THIS SITE

Site Information

My name is John H. Kim. This site began around 1994 as a section
of my newly-made personal web page. At that time I was a graduate
student in high-energy physics at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.
The URL at that time was www-e815.fnal.gov/~jhkim/rpg/.
The web at that time was just expanding out from being a tool for
physics documentation. Eventually I got my PhD in 1999, and moved
to a post-doc position at UC Irvine -- so the pages migrated to
www.ps.uci.edu/~jhkim/rpg/. In 2001, I left academia
for the software industry and the pages moved to a private site
at darkshire.org, generously hosted by my friend Graham
who had his own startup company. The startup eventually failed
and the server began to drop off the net regularly, so I eventually
migrated it to a parallel site at darkshire.net -- a domain
currently hosted by pair.com.

As for what is here -- it is my personal collection of RPG information,
including my own thoughts, material for campaigns I am playing in or
running, and facts gleaned from the web, newsgroups, or email. Over
many years, it has simply accumulated into a very large collection.

The site is hosted by pair.com. It is on an x86 FreeBSD box running
the Apache webserver. Pair supports various PHP and Perl extensions,
but mostly I rely on flat pages. I have a set of Perl scripts for a
number of automated editing functions like the alphabetized entries,
and a few CGI scripts. I edit it with emacs and use CVS for version
control and backups. It is fairly plain in design, since my
priorities are that it load and display on any browser, load
quickly, and be as functional as possible.

About Me

Basically I am a long-time RPG gamer. You can see my
home page for info about me in
general. I was introduced to D&D in kindergarden 1977 or so,
and have been playing RPGs pretty much ever since. In undergraduate
at U of Chicago, I had the good fortune of meeting a terrific gaming
club. In grad school at Columbia, I discovered newsgroups and
vastly expanded my understanding of games. I maintained the FAQ
for rec.games.frp.advocacy for a while, but unfortunately
that group seems to have all but died. You can see my
Campaigns page for a history of my
gaming, or my reviews list page
for notes on my taste in games.

I am not an RPG professional. I play RPGs for my own enjoyment and
curiosity. My two writing credits are largely accidental: (1)
as a contributor to FUDGE by Steffan O'Sullivan, because I was part of
discussion on the newsgroup rec.games.design in 1992 when
FUDGE was first proposed and hashed out, and (2) as a
contributor to Hero System Fifth Edition, for an
article I wrote in 1991 and
submitted to the Adventurer's Club magazine. It was never published
in AC as far as I know, but it circulated around the net, and ten
years later they wrote me that they wanted to incorporate it as an
option in the 5th edition rules.

Site Policies

In general, I have no problem with anyone using any of my
material: including my essays, game descriptions, reviews, and
play aids. If you are using a significant chunk of material,
then I would have a few simple conditions:

Include a credit for me (as "John H. Kim").

Include a URL or link to my site alongside the credit
(http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/). You can
make the link to a particular subject directory (i.e. directly to
my encyclopedia) for clarity.

Send me an email
telling me what you want to use and how, including the URL
or other reference. I always reply saying it is fine,
but I like to know when it is happening.

There is one exception for translations into Greek. Send me an
email first, asking permission,
and I will specify the requirements. (Each article should be on a
distinct webpage rather than forum post, and some assurance of
translation quality.)

As long as the above is true, then I have no problem with most any
usage. You can copy it, or edit it into part of your own material,
print it in a newsletter, or whatever. My rationale is that someone
who reads it should be able to [1] find the original (if your version
is modified), and [2] find updates and expansions that I may make
in the future.